Rituals, Emotions and food

Inside the rituals of two happy businesses. Over the last couple of months a few people have come up to me to tell me stories about things their companies do.

Firstly Andy Puleston – a Radio 1 alumni – came up to me and chatted to me about some of the things they did during the Andy Parfitt reinvention. Pizza meetings, heroic leaving speeches and lots of private offices filled with eclectic music and chat. I’ve let this run on because I found it fascinating. Ask me one time how I applied to get a job at Radio 1. Had an interview with Andy Parfitt and everything. Ah well.

Secondly we talk to Claudia Wallace (née Newman) – Head of New Business at Young and Rubicon. She tells me about Crisp Thursday and their Start the Week meeting. I loved this chat.

TRANSCRIPT

Bruce Daisley (00:07)
This is Eat Sleep Work Repeat, a weekly series of podcasts about happiness and work culture.

Yes, yes, we’re back, we’re back. So here’s the news. I skipped a month largely because I had like this 10 day holiday and when I came back it was all a bit hectic. And basically the big thing that’s happening is that I’ve signed this deal to do a book for Penguin Random House, which is amazing, right? But the prospect of writing 80,000 words of amazingness is daunting and every weekend I’ve prioritised that over this. And to be honest, someone made a catty comment.

that I couldn’t do my job and the podcast. So I’ve been very focused on making sure that all the cats didn’t win. Those cats, man, they are so catty. So hang on. There’s a better way of me sharing that news. So I’ve got a book coming out in early 2018 about fixing work. And I know that feels like miles away, but I need to submit 25,000 words before you finish your Easter eggs. And I’m sending out an SOS right now for people to send me some Adderall to get it done.

Despite the break and demands on me, we’re sweet here. Over the next few episodes, I’m going to be sharing some ways to improve work and I really want to hear your stories and your experiences. Maybe go into the book. I could maybe make you a sort of one out of 10 degree of fame. The good news is I’ve got loads of amazing episodes recorded, so we’re good to go. Now, today’s episode was inspired by a chat with a chap that you’re to hear from called Andy Poulson.

Basically, over the course of the last three or four months, two or three people have come up to me and said, we do this interesting thing at my work. We do, we do this, we do this. And so the two people you’re going to hear from, you’re going to hear from Andy Paulson, who used to work at Radio One. He’s now a consultant and you’ll hear a description of sort of what Andy did and what he does now. And also I chatted to a woman called Claudia Newman and Claudia is the head of new business at Young & Rubicon. They’re a

Creative advertising agency and she came up to me I spoke somewhere and she came up to me and she she told me about two things that they did at Y &R and I thought they’d be fabulous to share so a little bit of a different episode today It’s just put two people describing things that happen in their companies and these remarkable connections between them I think overall what you find is that these people are describing effective meetings that they have I’m a big

conscientious objector to meetings, a sort of start having a philosophy that we should get rid of at least three quarters of all meetings. And the interesting thing, I think, that comes from the discussion here, you can hear about meetings at Radio One, you’re going to hear about meetings at Young and Rubicon. And actually the meetings that seem to work here seem to be infused with emotion and sort of human connection. So there’s a fascinating thing. I mentioned it in passing.

Andy Paulson, when I first met him, was telling me about a Brian Eno, John Peel lecture. And Brian Eno, I’ll tweet it from my Twitter account. Brian Eno was talking about how he’d sat behind two pensioners on a bus and these two pensioners had been talking about a plot line, I think on Coronation Street. It was sort of a, think someone who had had a legend awakening.

And the two people were talking to each other on the bus. And he said he found it fascinating because he felt they were using the culture and the discussion of the culture to synchronize with each other. and sort of a think that’s what you’re to get from today’s episode. How we can achieve this synchrony, this how we can connect with each other on a human level, sometimes by things that probably on paper feel disposable, unnecessary, trivial.

So you’re going to hear about Crisp Thursday and I am fascinated and obsessed with Crisp Thursday. And you’re also going to hear lots of traditions from Radio One. So they had heroic leaving speeches. They had these pizza meetings where the old, the old controller of Radio One would pay out of his own money aware that the Daily Mail might look at his expenses. He would pay out of his own money for a whole batch of pizzas and beers.

and they’d celebrate the work they’ve done. Probably familiar stuff, nothing from either of these things that is unfamiliar to anyone in work, but I think they’re both interesting explorations of how great meetings are often infused with emotion. And you might remember just at end of last year, there was an episode where we were chatting to Twitter founder Biz Stone, and one thing we do have at Twitter, we have this sort of regular team meeting. We have it in the London office,

Biz created it and was sort part of it going into the overall company. And that meeting actually is infused with emotion. It’s infused with sort of discussions and really sort of, you know, stories of how the Twitter product is used. So it was really interesting for me that I think in principle, a lot of us would sit there and say, what’s the objective of this meeting? Where’s the agenda? And actually what these people appear to be saying is that sometimes

An emotional connection, a synchronisation that you achieve from meeting is really powerful. Andy had a fabulous career at Radio 1. He was a producer, he was a senior content producer. He went on to be an interactive editor, digital editor and largely he ended up, I think, running some of the programming. He talks about being a head of programming for overnight. OK, now he works at Secret Sessions.

sort of acting, they’re an agency for new and emerging artists, but he’s a fabulous, he’s got a fabulous perspective on what works with culture and he says two or three things. In fact, he ends with one thing, which are just brilliant insights, I think, into the way that teams tick. So let’s kick off, let’s go to Andy.

Andy Puleston (06:26)
It’s important to remember that Radio 1 had gone through some dramatic change through the 90s. Audiences were starting to do something very different to what Radio 1 was talking about. know, this was, if you think back that second summer of love, everyone was into raving and Radio 1 had Dave Lee Travis and Steve Wright, no offence to them. They were good DJs, but they weren’t really reflective of the audience that Radio 1 had been set up.

So it had done great work to reestablish its music credentials and its credibility. DJs like Pete Tonga come on board. Tim Westwood was on there. They were doing dance music, rap music, the essential mix, all this stuff. And they did a great job of reasserting their music credentials. I think what happened along the way was that they lost a little bit of the demographic.

And I think being candid, they were probably a bit too cool for school at one point. So they lost a good chunk of listeners. I think they probably went from 11 and a half million to about 9.4 in 2003. So the time that we’re talking about is this 10 year period between 2003 and the end of 2012. Radio wanted its last show from Yarding House, which was the HQ in December. And then it moved wholesale into the new broadcasting house.

And in that time, in that 10 year period, Radio 1 basically reinvented itself, was able to go from 9.4 million listeners to, I think it peaked at 12 million in 2011. So it did an amazing job of re-contacting that audience that it was set up to serve. And I think what’s interesting about the story is the ways in which it did that and the working conditions that were essentially fueling that.

that change. BigWeekend launched in 2003, Zalo joined in the same year.

Chris Moyles was put onto breakfast in 2004. At the time, Radio 1 was the leading youth network in the BBC, and it was well-resourced. It had a huge live music agenda. We were over in Ibiza, in New York, Sonar. The Live Lounge was becoming a super brand at that point. And plus, there were a load more DJs on the radio at that point. There were just more shows. The other thing to remember is that in 2003, social media was just message boards, forums, and group emails.

That shift to what at the time was called Web 2.0 happened around 2003 as MySpace kind of came along and all of a sudden everyone had their own profile, artists had their own profile.

And they were huge. If you remember that, Myspace was huge at the time. YouTube followed suit in about 2005. Twitter, I think, was 2006 in the UK. think Facebook was 2007. at that time, was just every year there was a new platform launching. And it was a time of immense change, but also a lot of opportunity. And for my team and the digital team, working out how the radio station could essentially apply itself to those platforms.

and turn them to our advantage was very, very exciting. And we were encouraged to do so. think that was the, what was liberating about it is that it was a time to forge a whole new load of behaviors, ways of doing things, taking risks, and being supported in that I think was definitely what made it such an exciting place to

Bruce Daisley
Lift the bonnet for me because you’ve got a situation there where your audience has gone down from the peak to that first dip from the 11 and a half to then the nine and a half. I suspect when audiences go down, it’s a test of faith, right? You’ve got to be confident and brave. Lift the bonnet. What was the culture like? Was this one monoculture? You’ve got loads of different DJs there.

Was it one culture or was it loads of different affiliated tribes?

Andy Puleston
So I think that the culture was, I think, probably more affiliated tribes in a way. I think a lot of that has to do with the way that the building and the station was laid out from a…

Well, from an architecture point of view, but from a sort of habitat point of view, just the structure of the building meant that the station was organized in a certain way physically. We were in a building called Yalding House, which is sort of in central London. And I think what’s interesting, and I know that you’ve had guests previously on your podcast who talk about the importance of architecture and the effect great architecture can have on work culture. But I’ve got kind of an opposing view to that, or rather I don’t think it’s conducive to a great work culture because Radio 1’s headquarters at that time were a dump.

I mean, don’t think, you know, if anyone recalls what it was like in that building, the building was pretty rotten in places and we knew we were moving out and so the leaks were never fixed. There were people in offices who had these strange contraptions draining water from the roof leaks hanging above their seats.

damp everywhere, mean the toilets used to overflow and you could, you know, and they only ever used to replace the dirty carpet tile so you could see how far it had spread. And the lift used to break all the time and there was stuff everywhere. But the layout was helpful because each tribe had its own space, right? So it was over five floors, you had the studios in the basement and then on the ground floor you had daytime production. First floor was the management team, second floor was the weekend shows.

third floor was one extra. I think that lack of open plan really added to the culture of Radio 1 because everyone has their own space. The tribes become little families inside the overall organisation. Each tribe has its own little chief in terms of the exec or the head of department who was running that particular team.

Bruce Daisley
So somewhere like Radio 1, I presume people are playing music, right? So when you’ve worked in open planning environments, people play music or do they just play the radio stuff?

Andy Puleston (12:24)
In Yalding House, everyone just used to play whatever they wanted to listen to.

Bruce Daisley
Right, so these little tribes were playing what they wanted. And describe with the tribes in little offices of five people, four people.

Andy Puleston (12:35)
They were bit bigger, think that probably all in all Radio 1 was about 120 people. So each one probably had 20 in it. Depending on the time of day. So in the mornings the daytime office was really really busy as you might expect. Specialists less so because those shows went out a little bit later. So there were always people about. think that was, know, the lights were kind of always on at Radio 1 pretty much.

But yeah, those groups were somewhere between sort of 15 and 20. In the communal areas, you have the output, obviously, sort of playing through the speakers in the ceiling, individually, people, if they were working on shows, would be listening to records. But I think that the lack of open plan allowed those groups to listen to whatever they wanted to.

And often in my team, we’d just take a little vote on the kind of show we wanted to listen to. So if we wanted to listen to the Essential Mix or the punk show or whatever, we would just decide that that was the one that we were going to check out. Broadcasting House, when we moved there, was quite different in that it was technically much more sophisticated and the speakers that were dotted around that whole eighth floor were all playing the live output. So you got to hear what was going on.

at all times but you didn’t have the freedom to choose what it was you wanted to listen to as a group. I think that changed things a little bit in terms of how people, what they enjoyed, how they behaved, what they would talk about.

Bruce Daisley
Tell me this normally the paradox of open plan is that you think it’s going to lead to more mingling and chatting between people Yeah And actually it tends not to did you find that when you’ve got like these these little offices with people in them listening to their own thing did that invite More mingling or so was open plan more effective

Andy Puleston
Those rooms were not exclusive. So anyone could walk anywhere in that building and would be welcome to go and talk to whoever they wanted to talk to. I think the thing about not a non-open plan or a more kind of segmented way of working is that…

people edit their behaviour less in front of a smaller audience. think personally they take more risks and I think it’s easier to be yourself if you’re in the confines of a smaller group who know you. I think you’re much more likely to interject across the room or join in a conversation that someone’s having. When you’re contained, you’re…

much less likely to annoy the people around you who are not part of that conversation. If you come at it from a hierarchy of needs point of view, that sense of belonging and that sense of esteem and the self-actualisation in OpenPlanet, I think it’s compromised a little bit. I don’t think you can be your truest self if you know that being your truest self is going to piss somebody off.

Bruce Daisley (15:25)
And where pissing someone off might be just talking.

Andy Puleston (15:27)
Yes,

or listening to music. I think that was the other thing about, and I’ve worked in Open Plan before where we’ve had the music on quietly and those who like complete silence for their work have come over and asked us to turn it down. But when you work in a broadcasting organisation and music is your principal subject matter and your lifeblood, if you like, it does feel slightly counterintuitive to not be able to do those things and to even discuss output. I think the freedom to personalise the space and to kind of…

build your own family feel I think is terribly important to that sense of belonging.

Bruce Daisley (15:59)
Do you

use music as sort of a figurative example really? So I guess to some extent the more that people talk, for other people the way we’re going to talk about music now is ideas. But do you think people talked about music in the office more when you had individual offices or when you had open plan office?

Andy Puleston (16:16)
or more.

Bruce Daisley (16:19)
Because I guess music was your stimulus. someone wandered past a specialist show and

Andy Puleston (16:23)
heard something interesting.

Bruce Daisley (16:25)
you have more discussion about those things where it’s open plan,

So you’re meeting more people or closed plan when sort of tribal puck.

Andy Puleston (16:32)
there was little…

Close plan, definitely. think just knowing that emotional safety, that you have the support of the people around you to put a tune on and turn it up and ask everybody in the vicinity what they think of it was welcomed because it was just that’s what you did.

And sometimes, I worked in specialist production for a little while, I ran midnight till four, so I spent quite a bit of time in that room. And I remember Zane or Zane Lowe’s producer putting something on and kind of turning it up and just getting all excited about it and just saying, you know, that’s going on the show tonight. And that was kind of normal and part of what made it exciting that those things kind of happened. And in Open Plan…

That behaviour happened in separate rooms or in the studios and was never really part of the fabric of what was going on.

Bruce Daisley (17:25)
There’s

a lowest common denominator, right? That if you’re in sort of this big open plan, that if someone suddenly puts on a bit of music and says, this is going on the show tonight, then you don’t know if someone’s in the middle of an accounts query crisis over the other side of the office or they’re in the middle of some sort of, you know, legal problem that they’ve got. So if you turn up music, you’re inviting someone else. There’s a lowest common denominator, right? You don’t want to bring stress to other people unnecessarily.

Andy Puleston (17:52)
So I think open plan has a normalizing effect on behavior. It kind of knocks off the edges that makes life interesting at work. And I think out of a courtesy for the people that you work with, you kind of don’t want to annoy them. And so you kind of curb and edit your behavior accordingly. And I think that has a compounding effect over time that just makes things a little bit less interesting. I think in terms of kind of being accepted, being…

kind of bit more out there in the behaviour to have the confidence to do that. think Open Plan does really prevent you from doing that a little bit.

Bruce Daisley (18:29)
What are the other elements of the culture? was there a guess, normally what you find is when cultures feel cohesive or when people are sort of bonding, these opportunities for everyone to get together and chew the fat or just like, you know, often social get togethers, was there any ways that you found effective at getting together and…

Andy Puleston (18:51)
Yeah, very much so. mean the heartbeat of Radio One from a staff point of view was the monthly pizza meeting. So as company meetings go, I think there’s an awful lot to learn from this one because it one of my favourite parts of being at that radio station. And in many ways it was a ritual in the truest sense. And I think just to kind of outline it for a second, once a month…

as many people as could fit into the boardroom would sort of pack themselves in. We’d take out the tables and chairs and everyone had to sit on the floor or on the radiators or on the windowsills. The boss’s PA would bring in a big stack of pizzas and kind of hand them out and everyone got a slice and a drink and the boss used to pay for it himself, which I thought was always tremendously admirable that he kind of took the…

the time to do that. And there was rarely enough for one pizza each, right? So everyone had to share. And I really like, I sort of like the, the analogy of having to sort of break bread. mean, breaking bread is kind of part of a lot of, a lot of rituals and quite synonymous with rituals. But it sort of happened, but the, the sharing of pizza was very, very kind of much kind of communal and all kind of eating together. It was very bonding. Everyone wanted to be in the room.

if you were late, it was standing room only, so you had to go in the back and of squash yourself in. And it did have a real family feel to it. I think there’s something quite special about having your workmates up kind of real close and having to, you know, rather than spread out in some sort of like cavernous lecture theater or kind of meeting space that some large offices have, I think it’s a bit like if you ever put a party on.

The size of the venue is absolutely critical to whether or not it works and having a large amount of people in a small space is much more conducive to having a good time than having the same amount of people in a much larger room.

Bruce Daisley (20:51)
Did in that room change when the audience was going down or when the audience was going up? Or did the people in the room feel like we’re doing the right thing and we’re a good team together? what I’m saying is, did what was happening in the outside world affect the mood in that room?

Andy Puleston (21:06)
Yeah, so what was interesting about that meeting was that it was part operational and part celebration. The tone of that meeting was great because everyone was treated like a grown-up. And Andy Parfit used to share as much information from the management side of things as he could, within reason. We would talk about what was happening in the BBC exec, what was happening at the Trust.

the DCMS if that was relevant and we would talk about audiences and creativity and process and ratings all the time. We would acknowledge where we were in the ratings and if I recall correctly, Radio One was set a rather ambitious target to return to 11 million. Well, I think it was returned to 10 and then that got pushed to 11.

by virtue of someone piping up in a meeting. And I think, you know, nine and a half million listeners isn’t bad.

And if you’re told that your target is nine, then nine and half is you’re overachieving. But if someone sets your target at 11, you then come to understand that you’re not as big as you need to be. What made the meeting so interesting was that the attitude was much more about acknowledging them as obstacles that would define the way forward rather than the thing that was going to impede the action.

And you know, Andy led those meetings brilliantly and we were very lucky to have someone like him in charge being very thoughtful and forward thinking about what we were to do next. The synchroniser, there’s definitely a synchronisation part to that meeting. When I say heartbeat, I think that from a cultural point of view, all cultures require synchronisation and synchronisation is important for cultures because…

it makes knowledge common. think what’s important to focus on is, remember I said it was kind of part celebration, and I think the emotional content of that pizza meeting is what made it what it was and why it was so effective. The point of rituals, right, is that they fuse groups and they allow, if they’re done well, they allow the emotions to have pride of place. And so at the pizza meeting,

We would spend a lot of time just focusing on who had done great work, reflecting that, acknowledging that, making that team or that person feel that they were appreciated for what they’d done and that they had contributed really well. Particularly around goodbyes, so if people were leaving, there was definitely a kind of that, I think we’d call it almost like a sort of living eulogy, if you like, to kind of acknowledge their contribution, which I always, I took a lot from that. That meeting had some emotional content. That’s really what you tie your memories to.

and that’s really the bit that makes it a cultural piece, I think, rather than just being a status update. This is about acknowledging all the things that make that group special. Andy was very good at doing something called positive labeling, and he used to get a great performance out of everyone, and one of the things that he used to do was say, the reason the BBC looks to you as its best is because not only are you the best producers,

but you’re the best administrators and you’re the best creatives. And that’s why it’s such a special place to work here because you are good at all of that. And when you’re in a situation and someone is saying that to you…

You don’t want to think of yourself as being anything less than that. You want to live up to that expectation. And a little bit of you just goes, yeah, you know what? I am fantastic at all of that stuff. It definitely brings out a performance. The big takeaways I reckon, apart from the results, is that…

but the BBC used to do a staff survey every year and you would have to fill out some sort of very kind of boilerplate questions about, do you know who your line manager is? Have you had an appraisal that year? And there was a bunch of questions and one of them was always on a scale of one to 10, how happy are you in your job? And Radio One, I think for at least three years on the bounce was the happiest place to work in the BBC. And I think if Andy, if you were to talk to anyone from that management team or to Andy, they would say that that was the thing.

of which they were most proud was that it was a happy place to work and there was a lot of laughter at Radio 1 and it was, and I say fun and I don’t mean that to sound trivial, but it was a meaningful place to be with a lot of people who were very invested in delivering what Radio 1 was set up to do.

Bruce Daisley (25:47)
And you said it was a happy place to work, but it sounded like it was a proud place to leave. And rituals are an interesting thing. Can we talk through the ritual of leaving speeches and how this became a celebration of almost like the sort of the legacy of Radio 1?

Andy Puleston (26:03)
I had to do a lot of goodbye speeches. Part of my time at Radio 1, there was a big period of redundancy and a lot of people in my team that had been there for a long time decided that it was time for them to go. And that was a tough one because they were friends of mine and people that I’d worked with and worked under for many years.

As they were leaving I was also hiring new people into that team. I took a lot from the pizza meeting and how the goodbye’s were done because they were done in a very heartfelt and very sincere, very genuine way. I think it’s important for people to see that happening and I think creating that appointment with gratitude and appreciation contributes to culture enormously. And when you work at Radio 1 it takes over your life, right? It becomes your life because you’re there an awful lot and if something goes wrong you find yourself doing a little bit of work on the weekend.

and it just becomes a part of who you are. And so when you decide to relinquish that, it’s a big moment for that person to say that they’re stepping away from that. And also I think if you’re, I always felt that if you were someone new to the organization, being part of that moment and to watch how you treat.

people as they leave infuses you with a sense of what it is you’re about to become a part of more than anything I could sit down and say you’re about to join something really really fantastic.

Bruce Daisley (27:29)
So describe these things.

Andy Puleston (27:30)
So I would encourage my team particularly to sort of make something make a memento that was bespoke to that person that was kind of from us that was theirs to kind of hang on the wall or whatever when they got home and so we used to

take pictures of people’s social media and then I would grab a kind of a gold disc from somewhere. There might be a kind of one on the out pile or something and we would sort of fashion that into something that really honoured that moment. Someone decided they were going off to write a book and so we all made book covers for the book we thought they should go and write and I remember having a commemorative statue made for someone.

So one of our longest serving employees, was a real kind of cult figure around the building. And I felt that obviously he couldn’t, he was irreplaceable, but I thought a commemorative statue was the way to go. So we had, I had him scanned and we had a little 3D print out made of him, still in broadcasting house somewhere, just to kind of mark that moment and to kind of make it feel special. I think that the call…

really is the content of what you say at the end of the day and that if you if you’re going to tell a joke or you’re going to tell a story it has to be in service of a bigger a deeper emotional point really but I we got it right I mean we I worked on on that over a kind of number of years and I knew we got it right because people were coming up people would come up to me

and just say that was, it’s just been really amazing to kind of see, to see that and to be part of that kind of moment. part of, have a whole lot of, you know, when you’re, when you’re changing out 80 % of your team, from a leadership point of view, the challenge is really, how do you bottle what you’ve got? How do you bottle what happens when people have worked together for 10 years?

and that kind of spirit that they have and that connection that they have through going on all of those adventures together. How do you bottle that so that the next group of people coming in to do those jobs feel a sense of being part of something very special? One of those things, they don’t teach you any of this stuff. In leadership training programs, You don’t get, no one talks to you about how to design a ritual.

or what it means to say goodbye to someone properly or how to honour somebody. It’s much more transactional in leadership training programmes but I think all that soft stuff is the difference between people who really reach in and grab you or are just a bit more take it or leave it think.

The purpose at work when it’s done well is not really something that you’re told is your purpose. Where a manager or leader will say the purpose of this organisation is this and that is now your purpose. I think the best application of it is to explain to people who work for you why the organisation has been set up and what it’s seeking to achieve. And then let people use their own intelligence and their own passions.

to work out how to translate that into their own action. at Radio One, I think this is the benefit of hindsight, I didn’t really realize what was going on at that time. But when I think back to what it was like at Radio One, I think that was really true. Where producers had their own programs, the DJs that they worked with, each one of those shows was a community in its own right because of the artists that it used to support and all the people that were behind those teams and the record companies. And so…

When you have your show or you have the digital function to look after or the marketing department, you’re able to really own your own bit of the solution and make it your own. And it’s an intensely creative thing to do. I guess if you’re really terrible, you could fail at that, but it was really just the degree to which you did that. There used to be these DJ dinners.

which I thought were always tremendously effective. think they were set up to remedy this sort of trench warfare that used to happen between DJs in the past. And I think there used to be real fights over who would get to play what record. And before the playlist policy was implemented, you would often have one DJ ending the show with a certain tune and the following DJ starting their show with exactly the same record, which couldn’t go on. mean, it just sounds totally uncoordinated. And so…

think one of the ways of dealing with that was to just bring everyone closer together and you know you’d hear stories about how John Peel didn’t see the appeal of Chris Moyles at all and they were sort of you know that completely intellectually opposed from one another but there are there are stories about what that they’re meeting at those DJ dinners and actually sitting down and having a chat and realizing that you know

their differences if you like or that they were just good blokes basically who want to have a drink and have a laugh and that that didn’t you know what they played on the radio didn’t make them a bad person yeah and actually the barriers between between those shows

were reduced significantly by the DJs spending time together. And I went to a couple, so when I was leading Midnight to a forum, Radio One, the execs used to go to those dinners. there would be a present, so we would eat, there would be a presentation, we would talk about station strategy and what we were all trying to do. And I think everyone was reminded that they were there to contribute to that in their own way, and that they were there to attract a certain kind of audience.

you get the money to run Radio One to deliver scale and that means appealing to a lot of different people and you would get people who listen to Radio One who were not interested in what happened in the breakfast show but they would put John Peel on religiously every evening when it was on and that would be their only experience with Radio One and that’s fine.

Bruce Daisley (33:49)
Food plays a part in that and in pizza. Is that irrelevant or is actually it’s just a great way to break down some of the…

Andy Puleston (33:56)
EEEE

Bruce Daisley (33:57)
Does food just break down some of the discomfort that some of us feel? So you put food in the middle and the discomfort is displaced by… Is the food relevant or irrelevant?

Andy Puleston (34:11)
I think it’s true to a certain extent. a good friend of mine was saying, I’ve talked to him about culture at work and he was saying that cake is not culture. And there is a, I think, sort of a tick almost when it’s someone’s birthday, you know, cake arrives and cake is cut up and handed out and then you just wander back to your desk. You might say happy birthday to that person. You kind of wander back and then you eat your cake and whatever. Now…

There’s a missed opportunity there, I think that food is essentially what brings people to the table, but it’s then all about what you say and the intent of that meeting.

I remember someone saying that with Radio 1 and that pizza meeting, you need a little bit of salt and fat to guarantee ratings, which is why the room was always full. I remember one year when we were doing a campaign around healthy eating, that pizza was replaced with fruit and water, and it was noticeably less well attended than the pizza meetings. And that’s where that phrase came from, you need salt and fat to guarantee ratings. And I think that food is, just from a human point of view,

is what brings people into proximity with one another. But I don’t think it, I think if you’re in charge of a situation like that, you then have to create lots of other reasons for that to be a meaningful encounter.

Bruce Daisley (35:44)
That’s a quote. That’s a really good quote.

Andy Puleston (35:45)
Really good.

Bruce Daisley (35:47)
Salt and fat to bring rating.

Andy Puleston (35:48)
So in fact, guarantee ratings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Bruce Daisley (35:53)
ending there from Andy. Paulston. A brilliant perspective on these things. Right, next up is Claudia Newman and I told you Claudia came up to me at an event and she started telling me about this happening. She said, she said there was a couple of happenings at YNR and they found themselves in a strange situation that sometimes when new joiners came into the company, new joiners would scratch their head and say, why are we doing these odd things? And

Of course on paper sometimes these rituals, we discussed there with Andy rituals, but sometimes these rituals feel difficult to explain. They’re like those weird family quirks that are hard to explain to the outside world. Crisp Thursday I thought was magnificent. And she also talks about start the week, which is their Monday morning meeting. I suspect a few of you got a few things that are similar to this in your work. I’m not saying that any of these things are

completely new and revelatory, but more actually there’s bringing this infusion of emotion seems to be really powerful for for bonding teams. So Claudia is head of new business at Y &R. She kicked off for me by telling me a little bit about the culture at Y &R.

Claudia Newman (37:08)
We’ve got a a quite a flexible approach to working hours and being in the office. You know, you can kind of come in any time until ten o’clock and if you you know, if you want to come in at eleven o’clock and work at home or twelve and work at home in the morning, that’s fine. It’s kind of very much a just make sure you do your work but wherever you need to do that. I do feel strongly though that

actually when people are in the office that’s when the best work is done. I there is you know, there’s certain meetings you always have at the beginning. So you meet with the new business team, you meet with the head of strategy, you meet kind of to understand their departments and what they do and what’s kind of expected. And you have your kind of sessions with HR, etcetera. There’s a kind of little book on YNR, a bit about its history, how it’s connected to the global network, what that means, what all the resources are that you have to hand. I it’s important that you I you know I feel really important

r really strongly that people feel a sense of being part of the agency as quickly as possible. So we’ve done a whole thing around what are the things that you might hear about that you might not know, bits of work that people talk about or different clients that people talk about. Just so that you know, you know, when someone’s like, the you know, the everyman remembered thing, you’re like, sorry, what’s that? And it’s just a particular campaign that we did that everyone’s very proud of that won lots of awards. And so you just kind of get a sense of what the language that people use.

It’s quite funny because all our meeting rooms are named the most random things that are not related to anything in particular, like the cafe room, which is not near a cafe, and people are Sorry, where’s the cafe room? Because I’m kinda looking for the cafe and it’s just that they you just kind of get to know those things. Every Thursday at about four twenty five, everyone in the agency receives an email from our head receptionist who’s called Gillian, who’s been there for over thirteen years, maybe I think over fifteen years.

And she sends an email out saying it’s Chris Thursday, it’s the best it’s the best time of the week. And what happens is that there’s a long table in the middle of the agency and Gillian has crafted a selection of different crisp flavours that go out in different stylish bowls, each with their own sign designed by someone in one of the designers in studio and printed on some nice card. And there’s posters up that say Gillian’s Crisp Im G Gillian McCaffee’s Crisp Emporium.

Because she that’s Julia McAfee, who’s the head receptionist. and it’s kind of all nicely branded and everyone crowds around, has some Chris, talks about the week, and there’s also wine and beer and some proseco right.

Bruce Daisley (39:31)
There’s so many layers of So firstly, mean are these unusual crisp flavours? Would she ever give us our cream and chive pringle or is it slightly more exotic than that?

Claudia Newman (39:44)
They’re slightly more exotic. It started off quite simple. No one really knew where it came from. It just started about a year ago. And she was like, I’m doing Chris Thursday, come along. And you can’t miss it ’cause it’s right in the middle of the agency. And they started quite normal flavours. And then that is actually you’ve just hit on kind of like one of the I think one of the best parts of Chris Thursday is there’s this layer of consistency of you know you’re gonna get crisps, you know you’re gonna get wine, beer and

Some t mostly some prosecco, but you don’t know what that kind of little added extra of the week’s gonna be. And Gillian is very creative and she’ll hold some she’ll she’ll bring a surprise to it each week. So a few weeks ago there was Pringles theme to it, and she came dressed as a Pringles can. Right. So it might be that she comes dressed as something, or it might be that so last week was Burns week. Yeah. So there was a kind of Scottish theme. Okay. And sometimes she brings things a

extra to Chris. So there was some crude’s a few weeks ago. and there was

Bruce Daisley (40:44)
and you’re very helpful.

Claudia Newman (40:45)
January was healthy, exactly. So that was the Crudetes. and one of the a couple of weeks before that we had there was s different flavours Japanese crackers. there was actually a cheese themed week. So there was all cheese flavoured crisps and then there was some cheese and crackers as well. so she always brings that kind of little added extra and sometimes it’s cultural themed or sometimes it’s just

a theme to do with what she fancies. Or sometimes in what’s really nice is there’ll be a kind of celebratory themes related to someone in the agency. So someone got engaged. So there was champagne flavoured champagne and smoked salmon flavour Chris. Don’t recommend them, but they do exist. And she just adds something every single week that Jean is qua.

Bruce Daisley (41:31)
Two questions about it then. You said it just started organic.

Claudia Newman (41:34)
Completely organically. It was not a planned thing. Right. It was Jillian wanting to do something on a Thursday afternoon.

Bruce Daisley (41:40)
And presumably Thursday, four is probably a good downtime where people feel like they can relax a bit. Is it a good place for chat and discussion?

Claudia Newman (41:50)
Yeah, it’s a it’s it’s exactly what it’s a good place for and I think that four thirty on a Thursday afternoon is a great time because it’s close enough towards the end of the day or the week that people feel like they can have a break. It doesn’t normally last more than half an hour because people are there promptly because they want their crisps. People often sometimes wander over and get some crisps, then walk into a meeting with those crisps. Or they stay around and chat, or you know, most people do, and it ends by five and people go back to their desks and work for another hour.

And it doesn’t it doesn’t signify the end of the day like we’re all gonna go off and kind of not and stop working. So it’s actually kind of it was it was a g it’s a good time. How long?

Bruce Daisley (42:25)
How’s it been going?

Claudia Newman (42:26)
About a year. So

Bruce Daisley (42:28)
Presumably you’ve had people join in that year. It feels a bit like the sort of thing that would be adored in a family and then someone come back for a family Christmas and this weird family tradition has to be explained to the new Christmas guest. What do new starters think of Crispthirst?

Claudia Newman (42:47)
Well

I think what’s so great about it is the fact that it is exactly what it says on the tin. Yeah. So there’s no mind games there. It is Chris Thursday. And it is so k tongue-in-cheek and ridiculous that she labels all the different crisps and she has her little new extras and and themes. But it’s everyone loves crisps, so it draws people immediately. And you don’t really need an explanation. No one really asks what is this, because it’s just a lot of crystals displayed nicely and with a lot of people around with some alcohol.

So it’s it is that’s kind of its its beauty, is the simplicity of it.

Bruce Daisley (43:21)
I really like the fact it feels very similar to me. I chatted to Richard Reed, the guy who set up Innocent Smoothies, and he said one of the most popular things that they created and one of the most enduring things is Cheese Club. And once a month they have Cheese Club and everyone gets together and they all try new cheeses and they try some golden oldies. And he said it’s just, there’s no reason for it. We couldn’t really explain it, but it’s one of the most popular things we do.

Claudia Newman (43:47)
It’s so uncontrived. It’s just what people want to be doing. And I I think that it’s it’s yeah, as I was saying, the the timing of it it works really well because it kind of punctuates the week. And I’ve been talking to different people in the agency about why they like it so much. And I feel like because in an ad agency and definitely in Y N it’s all about the talent and who there is there.

it’s so important to have these moments where, you know, the people can just spend time with the people. Yeah. And actually sometimes you have conversations there with people that you haven’t managed to have all week because you, you know, you just haven’t put a meeting in for it or you just haven’t managed to put by their desk because they’re not there and you’re not there for any reason. And actually you kind of just rely on the fact that most people are gonna be there and you can kinda this thing, I was just wondering about this, or I’ve just spoken to this person. I wanted to run this by you. And sometimes it’s you talk about work, sometimes you don’t talk about work at all. That’s what’s

really nice, there’s no expectation around it, there’s no h there’s no there isn’t really hype about it, it just happens really, really naturally. Yeah. It was quite funny ’cause yesterday there’s always various different shoots and things happening or people in meetings or not in the office for whatever reason. And then one of the kind of WhatsApp groups with one of the teams I got a message saying, Send me pictures of Chris Thursday. What’s happening? And they sent a picture of them with a packet of Walker’s Chris on their shooting like it’s not the same.

Andy Puleston (45:07)
.

Claudia Newman (45:08)
But I think yeah that again that level of

Consistency with you know what you’re gonna get, but also that kind of extra getting of kind of what’s the extra special thing that Gillian’s gonna bring this up.

Bruce Daisley (45:19)
really

strike me about it. It seems to fill the gap that pub cults used to have a bit in the sense that it’s like a bit of relaxation, often having an excuse to wander over and chat to someone that isn’t a meeting and it’s probably not an email but it’s just like a three sentence chat that’s probably you know

punctuated with a few jokes and a bit of chit chat. Probably feels like a productive thing. The fact it’s not outside work hours means it’s not as exclusive as for people who might have to dash off and do other things. Sort of fills the gap that pub culture might have filled.

Claudia Newman (45:52)
And it means that people go and are all there at the same time because it’s only ever, you know, maximum twenty, thirty metres away from your desk. And you see it happening and if you’re not in there it’s a bit of FOMO involved. Yeah. For sure.

Bruce Daisley (46:04)
Amazing, so new starters have sort of got used to it pretty…

Claudia Newman (46:07)
Yeah,

very quickly. One of the things I was wondering was whether it depends on its leader, so Gillian. ’cause there’s been a couple of instances where she hasn’t been there. So she is this fantastic character who also does she’s an actress as well. Sometimes she goes off for a couple of months at a time to do different shows and things. a or you know, maybe she’s got a week’s holiday or she’s not very well. And so a couple of times she’s bought the Chris in advance.

And briefed the one the the office management team on kind of setting it up. What

Bruce Daisley (46:38)
dedication to a lot of

Claudia Newman (46:40)
dedication. A lot of dedication. And also but last week actually she wasn’t there on the Thursday unexpectedly because she wasn’t very well. So actually it got moved to Friday. so I g I this this question about kind of how because it is kind of Gillian’s step piece and a bit of kind of her time to shine. she takes so much pride in it that I wonder

I wonder what happens if if she’s not there. But I think there’s now these kind of o different options whether it moves day or whether it or whether someone else whether someone else does it.

Bruce Daisley (47:12)
When we were chatting before you mentioned there’s another ritual you have which is this, is it every day this morning?

Claudia Newman (47:18)
Every

Monday morning. Start the week.

Bruce Daisley (47:20)
Start the week, right, so talk me through start the week.

Claudia Newman (47:22)
So start the week happens at ten o’clock on a Monday morning. we have this area where kind of the agency comes together called the pit. It’s got kind of a big seating area with kind of a rake seating and everyone get an email. Everyone knows it’s at ten o’clock, but no one gets up until the email comes saying, Everyone to the pit, which is another weird kind of ritual. So everyone goes to the pit and either the CEO or the managing director or or myself or the head of account management, kind of depending on who’s around.

will stand up and read kind of, I guess parish notices. So starts with information about new business, any new business meetings and opportunities. Then it will talk about every single account, what’s happening that week on that account. and then any other new joiners or birthdays or levers or any other any other business about the agency. There are training course that people are going on. Are there any speakers coming in that week? Are there any production companies coming to do a showcase? Are there any musicians coming to sing?

kind of anything that’s happening in the agency that week, is there any, you know, art exhibition in the agency that week. So I think what’s special about it is it’s not about the content as much as it is about the people coming together. So before you get to the pit, you pick up a sandwich on the way ’cause there’s breakfast laid out and tea and coffee’s laid out for the Monday morning. That’s quite a nice feeling about it as well as the everyone’s kind of munching a bit of food and having a having a tea or coffee.

while listening to some information about the agency. I think that’s a real we actually had a bit of downtime for a few weeks when it didn’t happen and lots of questions were kind of being murmured and actually the most unexpected people were asking questions about why Start the Week wasn’t happening. And when it came back there was people didn’t really realise that it had stopped for a reason but they just thought, great, it’s back. I’m really happy about that. And it’s just this it doesn’t it’s not that people don’t start any work until 10 o’clock, but it just sets momentum for the agency.

And I think it’s a really good way on a Monday morning, people are kind of thinking about right, what are their priorities for the week? What are my objectives for the week? What do I need to get done? And it’s how do I then start the week helps to contextualise that within what the agency’s doing and where the agency is going. And it’s it’s important to everybody from production to creative to finance to office management. and I think that’s I think it’s a really, really special kind of moment, ten minute moment.

So

Bruce Daisley (49:46)
We to me about an interview with Brian Eno, a music producer, and he said he’d observed two pensioners, and they’d been talking about EastEnders, and he was wondering why they’d done it, because they both appeared to have watched the same show. And his conclusion was, right, they’re using something they’ve got in common to synchronise, and actually synchronising around the people that we work with is one of the most

invisible but potent things that we can do. So feeling like you synchronise with people. And it feels to me like both Crisp Thursday

and this start the week have just got this gentle synchronisation that they just make you feel more of a team. Is that how it feels?

Claudia Newman (50:23)
Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s spot on. I hadn’t thought of it in terms of synchronization, but actually I do think that’s spot on because also if you have this thing that’s kind of bookending almost bookending the week. And also the other thing with Chris Thursday is it’s not I think what’s special is it’s not on a Friday, so it’s not any pressure for people to hang around on a Friday to six o’clock ’cause we’re a fluid agency in the way that we work. So if you’ve done your work by

five o’clock or you want to go off to the gym at four o’clock on a Friday and do a couple more hours at home and, you know, look after the kids and give the kids supper or give yourself supper, that’s absolutely fine. And I like the fact that it’s on a Thursday because then there’s no pressure to but yeah, I think that book ending of like, okay, right, so the th Department of Transport team on Monday I heard they were going out for a shoot and on Thursday were like, I wonder how wonder how that shoot went on Tuesday and you might not have a chance to ask them ask them those those questions. Yeah.

Bruce Daisley (51:15)
It feels like, you know that thing where you’re sitting next to someone and you think, like you’re introduced to someone new and you think, I’m certain I could have 30 brilliant conversations with this person but I don’t know what the things are. And it seems both of those times, those bookends, give you reasons, like you say, to wander over and ask how that was and just break the ice and make you feel more aligned as a group of people.

Claudia Newman (51:41)
I think also around in an in an advertising agency you work with so many different teams and what is so special about and that I’m kind of increasingly learning about even despite having worked agency side all my career, but is that you are always kind of coalescing around a single thing, which is your clients and the work you do for your clients and helping your clients solve their business problems, you know, for in our case through creativity. And I

you and as a as a result of that you’re always changing teams or having to w you know working with new people. And I think these things you know, you don’t you might not know that you’re gonna work with Bob in production in two weeks’ time. But actually because of Chris Thursday, you’ve spent ten minutes talking to him. So it actually makes that first meeting that you then have with him just that bit easier without you even having known that. And so anything that can kind of foster new relationships really helps. And I think so much of creativity as well comes from

you know, those random interactions that you have and I you know, I once had a conversation with somebody at Christ Thursday who was like, can I just I have I’ve had this idea about doing this with this brand, what do you think? And if I hadn’t have been there, then that wouldn’t have happened and then we actually made it happen. And that was completely because of because of that. And so anything that’s kind of l not a ritual that’s not a f a formality, I think really helps to kind of, you know, spark creativity and and improve it.

Bruce Daisley (53:09)
Right, well thanks for listening. Now, I’m hoping that next week’s episode is a fabulous live recording from Advertising Week Europe that’s in town this week. So I’m recording that on Thursday and we’ve got an amazing panel lined up. Let’s hope no one pulls out, but we’ve got Jeff Lloyd, the award-winning podcaster, broadcaster, and all-round wonderful guy. We’ve got Paul Coleman, who’s the writer of Car Share and a number of other award-winning.

He’s got a BAFTA, about that? A man with a BAFTA. And then Professor Sophie Scott, her Christmas lecture on laughter, and actually she’s been on the Russell Bram under the Skin podcast about laughter. She’s just an incredible source of knowledge about why we laugh. And our live show is going to be talking about bringing laughs back to work. So that’s myself and Sue Todd doing that. Fingers crossed. I’ll try and drop that into your feed on Friday.

And then after that, we’ve got some other great stuff coming on. We’ve got Sir Carrie Cooper, who has almost become a friend. He’s just one of the most erudite and informed spectators and commentators on how the world of work is emerging and developing. I went down to Lloyd’s Banking Group and spent some time with a guy called Tom Kagode and his team, who told me how they were getting on with the new work manifesto.

So there’s some fab stuff coming up. As ever, hit me up on LinkedIn. You can check out our Twitter for just some of the stuff that I’ve mentioned here. You can get that by searching Eat Sleep Work Repeat. See you next time.